Q: 2008 Mac Pro - Freezing
I have an Mac Pro (early 2008) running on 10.11.6 El Capitan with 16GM of memory and my start up disk is newer SSD and I have 2 other installed spinning drives on it one that has the old OS system that I use to as a drive to find older files and another newer T1 drive where I keep all of my files.
My computer has recently been freezing a couple of times a day. I'm able to mouse around the screen but I can not click on anything and any keyboard shortcuts do not work either. I'm using a wacom intous 4 which I've disconnected and tried just the Apple mouse but neither work. There are no unfreeze key commands that work either the only way I've found to unfreeze it is by shutting it down with the power button. The power button also doesn't react to the one tap it has to get held down to shut off. If I have music streaming the music will still be playing.
Typically I haven't been doing anything special when the computer has frozen. I've had it happen in safari and in firefox, with spotify running and spotify off, with Adobe Illustrator CC running I've had it freeze the most but I have not been working on complex files.
I know my machine is older but I have updated ram, hard-drives and have taken good care of it. I really don't want to replace it.
Things I've tried: Resetting Pram, resolving fonts in Font Book.
Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, SSD
Posted on Sep 16, 2016 1:48 PM
Could be failing RAM. Could be you have startup items or other installed items that could cause such a problem. You might try:
Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:
1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the
Command and R keys until the Utility Menu screen appears.
3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the Command and R keys until the Utility Menu screen appears. When the Utility Menu appears select Disk Utility and press the Continue button. After Disk Utility loads select the indented (usually, Macintosh HD) entry from the the side list. Click on the First Aid button in the toolbar. Wait until the operation completes, then quit Disk Utility and return to the Utility Menu.
4. Download and Install OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 Combo Update.
5. Reinstall OS X: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall OS X from the Utility Menu, and click on the Continue button.
Posted on Sep 16, 2016 1:57 PM